Evaluation and research of the relation of body mass index and cardiac pathology in legal death cases in cukurova çukurova region

Purpose: Obesity is characterized by excess adipose tissue. Obesity is a important risk factor for cardiovascular system disease. Body Mass Index has been commonly used as an index of obesity research. Body mass index over 25 kg/m2 is defined as ?obesity? by WHO. Obesity exists also in the etiology of atherosclerosis The aim of this study is the research of the relation of BMI and cardiac pathology in regional autopsy cases. Methods: 50 forensic autopsy cases aged in 18-31 were selected randomly. The autopsy cases went through the essential anthropometric measurements. The samples of coronary arteries, heart, liver and kidney were collected from the all cases. All sections were stained by routine Haematoxylin and Eosin and examined by light microscopy. All the analyses were performed using Statistical Package for the Social Science for Windows 11.5 Results: 43 (86 %) of the cases were male and 7 (14 %) of the cases were female. 20 (40 %) of the cases died due to natural causes, in 30 (60 %) of the cases the deaths were due to unnatural causes. The mean body mass index was 25.44 (±3,5) in male and 27,04(±5,76) in female. 7 (14 %) of the cases were accepted as ?obese? according to the classification of WHO. In heart, grade 5 changes were observed in 7 (14 %), grade 0 in 3 (% 6) of the cases It was determined the left anterior descending artery to be the most frequent region of the sclerosis . Conclusion: In this study, BMI was seemed to increase by age. The most indicating parameter was found to be the thickness of abdominal fat tissue. A significant relation was observed in the waist/hip ratio, BMI, age, abdominal fat thickness (p<0,01, r>0,05). The most common relation of the cardiac pathologies were to be the coronary atheries (p<0,001, r=0,736), and the age as the second factor. The relation between cardiac pathology and waist/hip ratio was found to be more significant than BMI . The data of our study were in accordance to that of the recent studies. Because of the absence of correlative studies in our country recently, we hope that our study would have a guiding value.